SESSION 4 — ENTERING THE CENTRAL PASSAGE
Time for more solo D&D run by ChatGPT! I am in a dungeon collecting pieces of a Witch-Queen's soul. I live in a kingdom where the ruler must draw from the Deck of Many Things at least once per year.
You can catch up on the backstory and the 1st session here:
- Session 0 - The World and Gods
- Session 0.1 - The Campaign Trailer
- Session 0.2 - Character Creation
- Soul in Shadows Session 1
- Soul in Shadows Session 2
- Soul in Shadows Session 3
XP Issues: ChatGPT gave me too much XP last time and wanted me to hit level three. I start off today by explaining to it the following:
I have a total of 500 xp. I need 900 xp to hit lvl 3.
- Low difficulty encounter should be 100 xp
- Medium is 150 xp.
- High is 200 xp.
Then at the end of today, I decided I should be level 3.
ChatGPT Errors:
- Still a Bit Slow: ChatGPT runs faster now, but it got pretty slow toward the end of the session and I had to quit out and come back once.
- Forgotten Minions: It said the void-ettin had minions, but then forgot about them.
- No Skill Check: It had me automatically succeed on a stealth check for no good reason.
- No Initiative: It doesn't roll initiative and just lets me do what I want.
- I Tell it What to Do: I basically tell it to have the ettin split into two beings, and it does it.
- Glitch Description: It comes up with a second set of descriptions of the two entities that peeled off from the ettin, and then forgets them.
- I Decide to be Level 3: I tell it I am level 3, and it agrees.
- Faulty Stat Block: It makes a stat block and it's all wrong.
The Big Finale
Here is the short version of what happened in this session:
- Final Soul Shard: We found the final soul piece. The ettin was lurking in this chamber.
- Weak Spot: The ettin had a weak spot in his chest, caused by when he tried to absorb a piece of the Queen's soul into him.
- Stab: I ran up and stabbed the weak spot twice, rolling well!
- Weakened: The ettin was weakened greatly, but still alive.
- Soul Piece: We grabbed the final soul shard and ran back to the throne in the main hall as the ettin chased us (no skill checks at all).
- Split: When we put the soul pieces in the throne, the ettin was hit with energy and SPLIT INTO TWO BEINGS, who vanished.
- Queen: The spirit of the Queen appeared. She gave me a charm, and a device to track her OTHER soul pieces (we have only repaired one third of her soul).
- Collapse: The place began to implode, so we ran and jumped through the portal and landed safely back in the Whispering Forest.
Map: I tried to get ChatGPT to make a real map of the dungeon, not the weird flowchart it made last time.
It was able to come up with really cool maps, but they don't match the layout at all.
Final Room of the Dungeon: There's only one way left to go. The hall with the ettin. The void-scar is on my ribs again (it keeps moving from my hand to my ribs).
ChatGPT says I automatically succeed on my Stealth check. "Roll is not required—you succeed automatically thanks to Dane’s caution, Thalen’s help, and the displacer beast’s keen instincts."
There is another throne in this room. Standing behind the throne is the ettin.
I try to sneak in to find the soul shard. ChatGPT decides to roll my stealth check for me, even though I told it I am making dice rolls for myself. I think I should have disadvantage on stealth due to my chain mail...? I succeed.
I see the last soul shard. The description of the soul shard is very cool:
"1. The Final Soul Shard
You spot it—
Embedded in a floating cluster of violet crystal shards hovering behind the ettin, about 20 feet off the ground.
The shards orbit one another like a broken heart trying to remember its shape.
It is much more exposed than the first two."
Minions: Then it says that the Ettin has a cluster of minions (voidlings!) nearby.
Murals of Exposition: There are more murals. One shows that the ettin swallowed a soul shard. Now it says the last fragment is in the ettin's body!
Changes its Mind: Then it says that the floating shard cluster must be something else: "Some kind of anchor, binding, or focusing crystal."
I feel like it made this up as it went along and confused itself.
I told the bot a few times that an ettin is too powerful for a level 2 character to fight. I've decided to just play it out and see what happens - will the bot change its stats?
Giving the ettin minions makes this even harder.
Failed Check: This time it lets me roll the Stealth check. I do indeed have disadvantage due to chainmail.
I roll a 4, and a 15.
I failed. The ettin notices me, then says the shard is hovering nearby! It forgot again. I remind it that the ettin swallowed the shard.
Weak Point: It tells me the thing in the ettin's chest is not one of the pieces, but a a stolen void-corrupted anchor that the ettin needs to remain in this plane.
So.. it's a weak point! And if I hit it, maybe we can send the ettin away! How would I know any of this? Who knows. Let's just see what happens. Here is what I said to ChatGPT:
"So.. the thing in the ettin's chest is a weak point! If it's an anchor that keeps the ettin here, then if I destroy it, the ettin could vanish and be sent back to wherever it was before?! I am going to run up and stab it in the chest, trying to break it. I rolled a 17+5! I hit AC 22! I dod 5+5 = 10 dmg to the shard. I'll use my action surge just in case. I roll 15+5 = 20! I do another 5+5 = 10 dmg! Does my plan work?"
"THE ETTIN IS NOW IN A SPECIAL STATE:
Void-Tether Severed: It is losing its physical form.
- Weakened: All its attacks have disadvantage.
- Its hit points are effectively reduced to half of what they were.
- If reduced to 0, it will be banished permanently from this realm."
The ettin had 85 HP. Half of that is 44. I did 20 damage to the ettin, so that means the ettin has 24 hit points left.
Wait.. in the next response, the ettin vanishes and the whole dungeon starts to collapse.
ChatGPT doesn't want to roll initiative. I basically cheated here, telling it what to do rather than playing along with what it gave me.
I give it an ooc note saying that it would be cool if the ettin split into two beings, and the bot immediately does it. It's almost like I am running the game.
Now there is The Black-Flame Ogre: A feral being of pure rage.
The Pale-Echo Giant: The original mortal giant whose soul was bound and corrupted. His name was Eltin, and he was an ally of Queen Badelia's.
ChatGPT then glitches out and comes up with two new ones who are not nearly as imaginative. I ignore them and the bot seems to forget them moments later.
Throne: We run back to the first room as the place begins to collapse. I put the shards in the throne.
The void ettin splits into two beings and are pulled through a portal.
The Queen's soul form appears. She explains that we have rescued.. a third of her soul:
"Her voice is faint, barely above a whisper:
“My knight…
My echo…
There is more yet to do.”
She looks toward the ceiling—toward Tarokhold, impossibly far away.
“I am not whole.
My body sleeps, but my will endures.
You have freed one third… only one third.”
She touches me void scar and it becomes a "mark of connection" (this should be a charm, shouldn't it?)
The Queen vanishes, and an item appears on the throne.
Soul Beacon: It's a crystal - a soul beacon. An item we can use to track the rest of her soul pieces.
I look up the charm of heroism, which was one of the things that annoyed me the most in D&D 2014. You had to look up the charm, then look up a potion of heroism, then look up the Bless spell!
It's still annoying in 2024. I had to assemble all of its effect myself:
Charm of Heroism
Supernatural Gift (Charm)
This Charm gives you the following effects for one hour:
- 10 temporary hit points
- Whenever you make an attack roll or a saving throw, you add 1d4.
The charm and the effects vanish after one hour.
Collapsing Dungeon: It has us escape the collapsing dungeon (with no skill check of any kind, we just outrun the collapse).
This should have been full of drama - failed checks mean you are buried under rubble. The Displacer beast using its displacement to avoid being hit. Thalen, the annoying NPC sidekick getting crushed under rubble. It would have been great.
Then I ask about the charm (it agrees to give it to me, of course) and ChatGPT somehow forgets that we just escaped the dungeon, and thinks we're still in it. I correct it.
Level 3: I think this is the perfect point to hit level 3, even though this idea contradicts what I told it about XP at the beginning of this session.
I am going to be an eldritch knight. Makes sense, right? eldritch because we live in a Magocracy. Knight because I was born due to the Knight card from the Deck of Many Things.
the core ideas of this are pretty cool! The problem is that it adds and forgets a ton of details constantly. There is a really fun campaign in here somewhere, but right now the AI struggles so much with consistency that I am sometimes running the game myself.
I asked ChatGPT to make a Void-Ettin stat block:
I have 900 xp, and I will hit 4th level when I have 2,700 xp. It should take a few sessions for me to hit level 4.
Difficulty:
- Low: 150 exp
- Moderate: 225 exp
- High: 400 exp
I basically told it what we're going to do next session. I am going to "train" and learn my Eldritch Knight spells, then test my new magic against monsters in the forest.
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